Pay-up Time For Slavery

October 01, 2002|By Amy Pagnozzi

I think we'd all agree that there isn't enough money in the world to make whole the people who lost loved ones to terrorism on Sept. 11.

Nevertheless, we gave -- or at least we shall end up giving once the various fund-disseminating groups have gotten their acts together -- an average of roughly a million bucks to the families of each of the 3,000 terror victims.

Although you could easily argue that putting any monetary figure upon their suffering belittles such devastating loss, we did not.

Nor did we stipulate that the moneyed mourning with secure financial futures be denied their share of benefits.

Or, for that matter, how those benefits are spent.

Those who denied themselves some of life's littler pleasures so they could make bigger charitable donations hoped their money would be well spent --enabling bereaved spouses to continue making their mortgage payments, ensuring college education for the children, etc.

But nothing prevents the widow or widower from plunking down money for a face lift, tushy and tummy-tuck before embarking on a round-the-world cruise -- or engaging a $300-an-hour call girl or boy-toy full-time.

As for children, there are plenty who are college-age but not college-inclined -- some of whom would rather blow the money on, say, a fully equipped Hummer or 24/7 clubbing.

So are you still with me out there?

Or, are you so inflamed by the tawdry scenarios I've imposed upon the 9/11 families you can barely make out the newsprint, what with that smoke coming out of your ears!

Uh-huh. I thought so. Great -- I was banking on your outrage!

Maybe now, you can get yourselves similarly worked up over centuries of American terrorism: multitudes of 9/11s whose toll of lost lives is so massive as to be incalculable -- and that's supposing a majority of us cared enough to count.

I'm talking about slavery, the subject of a three-day conference at Yale this past weekend, where a panel of leading academics that met on Saturday decided reparations were beside the point.

``The debate on reparations completely misses the point. It conceals the psychological impact of slavery,'' said Orlando Patterson, the John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. ``It diverts attention from the pervasive problems of poverty and discrimination.''

As Peter Schuck, the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law at Yale put it, ``It's insulting in its effort to quantify the suffering.''

More insulting than our stiffing victims of our own Holocaust (actually our SECOND Holocaust, the Native American genocide was first) was America's help in ensuring Germany, Austria and other countries made reparations to Hitler's Holocaust victims.

Nor was there opposition to financial settlements to Japanese citizens interned in camps during World War II.

Exactly what is it that sets African Americans apart from their fellows when it comes to reparations in the minds of those cozily tenured professors who gathered at Yale?

Schuck noted that affirmative action, an attempt at reparations of sorts, entered more bitterness and ``magnified the perceived injustices around us."

Yeah, sure -- among so-called white people whose sense of privilege is so innate that they perceive it as their right, so even the most minute attempt to level the playing field feels like an assault and ignites atavistic blood-feud instincts.

Whites are a majority in this country, and 90 percent oppose reparations for slavery, according to polls.

As for the argument a friend posed to me recently, that African Americans lose the moral high ground and whites their guilt should reparations become reality, don't make me laugh!

We live in an era where most people, regardless of race, are ruled by greed, not guilt.

Our credo: Show me the money!

Good for Illinois state Sen. Donne Trotter, who at a recent rally in Washington said: ``We are owed for 500 years of terrorism. We want to be paid and we want to be paid now.''

Show me the money and I no longer care that eight of Yale's 10 residential colleges last year were discovered to have been named for slave owners and have not yet been renamed.

I'll use the cash to attend a college more socially conscious. Or maybe I'll just sit on my front stoop and further alienate my neighbors, sucking down 40-ouncers, sans paper bag -- this is the land of the free, after all, so long as you have money.